Court orders release of Coptic kids

AN EGYPTIAN court has ordered the release of two Coptic Christian children accused of insulting Islam, according to a source in the prosecutor's office.

The source said prosecutor Abdel Meguid Mahmud took the decision because the accused, aged nine and 10, are minors, but the source did not specify if the charges were dropped.

Police arrested the children earlier this week after a complaint from Beni Sewif residents in southern Egypt for insulting Islam by allegedly urinating on a paper containing verses of the Koran, a judicial official said.

Nabil Naji Rizq and Mina Nadi Faraj were to have been held and questioned for a week at a juvenile facility.

Related Content

A Coptic activist and lawyer said Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi had intervened to have the children freed.

''I submitted a request to President Morsi, which his Coptic aide, Samir Morcos, helped to deliver to him, and the President gave instructions for the prosecutor to release the two children,'' said Naguib Guebrail.

Advertisement

He said Dr Morsi had ruled that their detention was in violation of international conventions on children's rights signed by Egypt.

It was the first such accusation against children in Egypt, where a Coptic teacher was last month sentence to six years in prison for insulting the Prophet Muhammad and the country's Islamist President on Facebook.

The trial of another Copt for posting excerpts from anti-Islam film Innocence of Muslims on the internet will resume on October 17. Egypt's Copts fear the low-budget film produced by a Copt from the US would lead to further persecution at home. Christians make 6-10 per cent of Egypt's 82 million population.